


Voices

by amuk



Series: Clearing Skies [3]
Category: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Amnesia, Friendship, Gen, Introspection, Loss, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 17:35:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/652741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amuk/pseuds/amuk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Memory is a funny thing, as Cloud soon realizes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Voices

**Author's Note:**

> Scene: When Cloud crashes into Aerith’s church
> 
> The next few ones are more or less on this scene, or at least everything before Cloud visits Aerith’s mom. I haven’t been quite as inspired by the game after that to write yet, but we’ll see...

There is a voice in his head, quiet and loud, and he should be more worried about this. Instead, he gives a sigh of relief, his muscles relax, and there is no worry if he’s dead or alive.

 

How odd.

 

Before he can think of it more, the voice continues. It sounds familiar but Cloud doesn’t recognize the voice fully. Instead, it just tickles his memory, a ripple in a pond, and before he can see the reflection it disappears. It remains in the far reaches of his mind, a corner that should be dusted but probably never will.

 

He used to know it, he thinks, but so long ago that he cannot recall why or how.  

 

(Feelings are never enough to understand, even when is urging him to try harder, to search harder. _This is **important.**_ )

 

The voice teases him, one of those inside jokes that only friends understand. A reference—if those scrapped knees meant anything, he has already forgotten.

 

(—what else has he forgotten then?)

 

Irritation runs through him, still not knowing the voice that tries to guide him back to wakefulness. For a heartbeat, he tries—

 

(—and there is heartbreak in the making, one of swords and confident grins—)

 

—and fails.

 

When Cloud reaches the light and the voice dissipates, there is a pang somewhere inside.

 

(It’s only later, when he remembers with a jolt (of _Zack!_ and heroes and not being enough, of falling and crashing and somehow surviving, of when his tears and _his_ blood mixed together) who that voice is that he realizes the loss.

 

He nearly left behind his savior, the reason he is still alive, the debt he owed.

 

And that is almost too much to bear.)


End file.
